Construction of cDNA library scleractinian Corals

Abstract

Marine life possesses unlimited potential value as its industrial use is at only1% despite making up 80% of entire world’s life. From marine life, coral is avery important taxonomic group that creates the foundation of marine ecosystemand Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) managesand protects all species belong to hard corals and antipathes sp. as globalendangered species in Appendix II. Coral and coral reef are decreasing due tosharp changes in earth’s environment and human activity and this is becoming aworldwide problem. Coral reefs are becoming seriously affected by increase insea water temperature, change in chemical composition, and over-development,overfishing, and pollution of seacoasts. As non-model biota, corals also havemany areas left to research and in particular, due to its uniqueness of nucleicacid extraction, the fact that techniques applied in other organisms cannot besimilarly applied has to be overcome to raise research on individual gene togenome level to fulfill the need to discover specific genetic resource andmanifesting trend possessed by the organism. This study extracts nucleic acidfrom 20 coral species collected from 3 countries including Korea, Taiwan, andPalau and the extracted RNA is converted to 1st level cDNA to arrange amethod to preserve in complete state. Using house keeping gene whichmanifests continuously under any condition, polymerase chain reaction (PCR)occurs and image of the amplified clone is checked through electrophoresis forqualitative analysis. After checking that 1st level cDNA state is createdperfectly, final confirmation on whether amplified gene is originally intendedgene is performed through cDNA sequencing of gene clones. As a result, wewere able to secure physical materials of useful cDNA stock of coral resourcesfrom the 20 coral species. The industrial application cDNA stock can beincreased by discovering functional genes in marine life in the future and thisresult enables the applied coral research at molecular level which has notperformed before.